It was absolutely AMAZING. I had been before (our 'guide' person Karanja decided to take us on a day when everyone was hungover and/or tired and we saw more of Karanja's elderly relatives than we did of the waterfall so it was a bit of a let down) but this was so much better. Basically, the waterfall is quite cool to look at from above, being a big stream of water tumbling from a cliff, but me and Amy decided it would be even cooler to view from directly below.
Therefore, we clambered down some 'steps' (I'm using quotation marks because these were actually the work of some random Kenyan who one day decided 'OH let's put a load of boulders on the side of this very steep cliff and allow people to walk down'), over many many slippery rocks (in flipflops) and got ourselves as close to the waterfall as possible without actually being in the water. We got absolutely soaked and covered in mud on the way back up the cliff thing but it was SO much fun and just amazing to be standing right underneath an enormous waterfall yelling over the roar of it and laughing insanely.
We also stopped at the Equator on the way to the falls and a Kenyan guy gave us a demonstration of how the water spins clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, anti-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, and straight when it's directly on the Equator, in the hope that we'd buy a paper certificate from him for an large amount of Kenyan shillings. It actually DOES do it! That was pretty awesome, and we had some fun being stupid and leaping from one hemisphere to the other.On the way back from the waterfall we also found some HIPPOS! There was basically a big swampy area and in the middle we realised that what we thought was a big lump of mud was actually breathing and twitching its ears and being generally hippo-like :)
In the evening it was Mark's birthday (Mark is another volunteer who came out 4 months before we did so has been very nice showing us around) so we all went to Taidy's for food and drink, where we spent a very long time trying to surreptitiously get a pink, heart shaped cake + candles lit for Mark. I then had the most TERRIFYING journey of my life.
Basically, we wanted to go to Summit, the club we went to last Saturday with a dance floor and a log fire. The cheapest way to get there is by Boda-Boda. These are bikes, cycled by scrawny Kenyan men, with a padded seat on the back of them for a passenger. I'd been wanting to try one just to see what it was like and so we all clambered onto the back of them and away they went, all of us screaming and going 'OH MY GOD THIS IS SCARY' to each other. This wasn't the bad part. After about 2 minutes, everyone else had disappeared into the distance and I was left on the back of this little bike, surrounded by blackness and total silence. Suddenly, my guy decided to stop the bike, turn around and take a different route to that which all of my friends had taken, insisting that 'the road has been changed' when I asked why. From this point onwards half of my brain was busy thinking 'actually this is quite a cool way to travel, and aren't the stars beautiful?', and the other half was busy formulating an escape plan in the scenario (which was seeming more and more likely at this point) that this man was actually just going to kidnap me or something horrible. After a lot of panicking on my part, and about 10 minutes of seemingly everlasting and identical roads, I finally spotted my friends waiting for me in the distance and ALLELUIA we were at Summit.
NEVER again am I taking one of those in the dark.
The evening was quite good, but I was totally sober and thus totally aware of all the bad things such as homesickness and arguing that was going on around me. I did do some dancing, but after that a lot of the evening was spent comforting others, and then finally being comforted myself as I suddenly felt extremely ill at around midnight and ended up being parcelled into a taxi and sent home at 2 am.
Today I feel almost normal again, but rather intrigued as to why I felt so ill last night.
1 comment:
Zoe - I am shaocked and appauled that there is no comment of our phone conversation - nuf said.
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